Tag: Myth

I shared the written The Lonely Oak (a Tale of the Woods) in a previous post. In the past few months I’ve listened to others reading my work and wondered how people would respond to it.

Besides, folks may want a break from a steady diet of Empty Sky (I’ll return to it in a few weeks, I promise).

Do let me know what you think. Suggestions for improving this are quite welcome.

Click on the “post” above to open the story in a separate tab/window if you wish to read along side.

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Every morning the runner’s legs churned the sand. Before his people rose from their slumbers, his legs pushed him to a point on the island from which other islands, islands which floated far in the east, could be seen. Before his people awoke, he came to where his island’s sand met the sea and sky.

The runner stood in the darkness at the edge of the peninsula, his toes meeting the waves. There was no sun but he raised his hands to his eyes as if shielding them from a great light. He stood there, his mind pacing, rehearsing what had been done so often before.

The horizon shimmered as the light of a new day began to make its presence known. The runner began to hum.

A Darkness mounted the waters between the far islands. The runner watched the darkness carefully. His hum became a soft song.

The Darkness rode the waves between the islands, moving towards the sun. The runner’s song became a clarion deep in his chest. Far away the sun changed the direction it travelled. It moved among the islands, its motion changing with each new chord the runner called. The Darkness followed the sun, striving after it, never in time to the changes in the song. The entirety of the runner’s mind was focused on the scene he choreographed.

Finally, the sun danced far out over the sea. The Darkness returned to the islands the sun had left behind. The runner grew silent. He turned to begin his walk back to the village and stopped. A boy, a youth just entering manhood, stood where the peninsula reached the island.

The runner walked along the peninsula, watching the boy. He stopped and stared when they were side by side.

“Why do you run every morning?” asked the boy. “What is the song you sing?”

“Do your elders know you have left the village?”

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There was once a little boy who left his village and returned knowing how to journey the way shaman do. He returned to his people wearing tassels on his wrists and everybody who saw these tassels knew they were magic but nobody said anything to him about them.

Each day, the young boy helped tend the village herds and fields, each evening he ate with the old and not-so-old, the young and not-so-young in the village. He laughed at their jokes and made some of his own, cried at their grief and mourned all of his own.

Finally, one evening, a little girl from the village came to the boy and asked, “Boy, what are those tassels you wear on your arms?”

She did this at the village fire and everyone grew quiet to hear what the big boy would say.

He smiled at the little girl and asked, “What do you see, little one?”

“I see snakes,” she said. “Big, beautiful snakes. Snakes to ride on and carry me away.”

The boy nodded. “Thank you, little girl. Thank you for telling me what these tassels are on my arms. Now I know they are snakes. Thank you very much.”

The little girl smiled and laughed and the grown boy did, too, as the little girl went off to play.

A few nights later one of the oldest men in the village came up to the boy by the village fire and asked, “What are those tassels on your arms, boy?”

“What do you see, Grandfather?” asked the boy.

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Once upon a time, in a land almost too far away, there lived a tall, glorious oak. It wasn’t odd at all that a tall, glorious oak should live in this land for this land was a Woods. But this Woods wasn’t like any woods or forests you’ve ever seen before. Here the animals talked and flowers flew and trees moved wherever they needed. This was a magical Woods, unlike most others.

You understand, don’t you? It’s magic, after all.

This tall oak watched all around her. She wasn’t old as oaks go in years, but she was a wise oak just the same. She had been an oak all her life. And all her life she had seen things in the Woods. Good things and bad things, sad things and glad things. And everything she saw she held deep inside, deep where the blood of trees flows from the roots in the ground to the high crown of leaves that brace the sky.

One of the things she’d seen often was the love of others for the trees around her. This made her glad. “Someday,” she thought, “someone will come and love me.”

She waited for some time, through many seasons in fact. But no one came. Many came through the Woods where she lived and spread her leaves, but all that came seemed to prefer the shade of other trees. The tall oak watched this and wondered, “Is there something wrong with my leaves? Or my bark? Perhaps I don’t shade the world as I might?”

None of this was true of course. The oak’s leaves were among the most beautiful in the Woods. Her bark was clean and smooth and ran straighter than many other trees. Her shade was a peaceful relief to the small creatures that sought shelter under her.

It’s magic, after all.

But all this wonderful oak saw was the scores of others resting under other trees. “Perhaps I’m too tall a tree?”

And so, despite the fact that she was a beautiful oak, she let her boughs drop to her sides and twisted her trunk slightly, trying to make herself smaller in the Woods.

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I’m blessed to have Casey Wilkinson, aka Lady Sparrowhawk, a gifted artist as a friend. She provided the artwork for this story.

Enjoy!

Once upon a time, when a small, magical child lived in a magical woods, a horrible thing happened. Someone left the child outside in the cold, rainy, wet damp of dawn. It doesn’t matter if this happened once or a thousand times. When you are a child, even once is enough.

It so happened, as the child grew into a boy, that others came by who were blind to the child and the boy and splattered mud as they passed. The mud covered the growing boy, its coldness reminding him of being abandoned in the cold, damp dawn.

The child grew into a clever boy. He kept his eyes open and watched the flowers spreading their petals to let in the morning sun, spiders spinning delicate webs stronger than the strongest steel, and squirrels and ants busying themselves gathering winter’s harvest.

Over time the boy fell in love with the world around him and decided that no matter what happened to him, he could learn from it. Quickly the boy’s wisdom grew as he watched and studied and quietly observed until he became quieter and wiser than most in the Woods.

But while he grew, there was a mud caked child inside, a child the wise boy knew nothing of, crying in the cold, damp dawn. The boy lived with the ache of the child inside so long it became like a cloak which no one else could see and which was more real to the growing boy than anything else in his world. The boy sat and watched the mud that caked around him as others splashed and noticed it hardened as it dried. The child gave the boy an idea.

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I read this book because I worked in parallel fields for many years and also for research into some current writing projects. Anatomy of Motive is a good read, informative without going into horrific detail. A good source book.

1) I vacillated between a 1 or 2 star rating for Every Love Story is a Ghost Story.
2) I read this side by side with Jonathan Eig’s "Ali: a life" (a better book if you’re into biographies, my opinion).
3) I opted to read Every Love Story…

I’ll start by noting that Ali has been one of my heros for much of my adult life. Sometimes it’s good to learn some of our heros’ histories, other times not.
As biographies go, this was better than most I’ve read and seemed synoptic with…

(I had to enter this book so apologize now for errors. I was surprised Goodreads didn’t have it).
This was the first recognizable "Man v Machine" book I read. I probably read others before this but this one came to me when I was working …

This is an interesting book that (in my opinion) doesn’t go far enough. Yes, some may claim there’s a problem and Klein does a dynamite job detailing what that problem is.
Where are the actionable solutions? Where are step by step plans…